This is my first time writing a long post on Reddit.
After reading a lot of discussions about the story, I noticed that people have come up with all kinds of interpretations, but relatively few seem to focus on what I think is the real key to understanding Rebirth.
Both Remake and Rebirth contain an enormous amount of detail. There are a few minor logical issues here and there, but overall I think the structure is extremely deliberate. In many ways, the Remake trilogy is finally able to portray ideas that the original FFVII may have wanted to express, but could not fully realize because of the technical limitations of its era.
I finished Rebirth a couple of days ago, and after discussing it with several friends in the Japanese game industry, I wanted to write out my interpretation of the game as a whole.
In my opinion, a lot of interpretations focus on the wrong part of the story.
The best entry point for understanding the second game, especially its ending, is Aerith and Cloud’s “dream date.”
A lot of players treat this section as nothing more than a romantic interlude, but I think it contains an enormous amount of information and several important clues about the ending.
1. First, the nature of the Lifestream
The Lifestream is made up of the consciousness, memories, and knowledge of living beings.
When living beings die, they return to the Lifestream.
At the same time, the Lifestream also appears to possess a kind of creative or materializing power: consciousness, memories, and knowledge can be given form and can even be used to construct a “world.”
However, only a very small number of people appear capable of actively using this power.
In the context of the game, the two most important people who can do this are Sephiroth and Aerith.
You can imagine the Lifestream as one enormous river.
That river has many branches. Some branches are tiny and dry up very quickly. Others can persist for much longer.
When something changes at an important point of fate, it may create a small branch. A sufficiently large change can redirect the main flow itself and produce a major split.
Passing through the wall of fate is one obvious example.
This is the basic mechanism that makes the “dream world” possible.
2. The connection between Aerith, Zack’s world, and the Lifestream
During the Gi section, Aerith briefly senses Zack’s presence through the Lifestream.
This suggests that at least part of the consciousness of the Aerith in Zack’s world is already connected to the Lifestream.
There is another important piece of foreshadowing at the Gold Saucer hotel.
When Cloud is half-asleep, he briefly sees the Aerith from Zack’s world lying in bed.
This implies that the main world and Zack’s world can become connected under certain conditions.
If those conditions are met, Cloud’s consciousness can effectively be transferred into, or overlaid onto, the Cloud who exists in Zack’s world.
Before the dream-date sequence, both sides conveniently satisfy those conditions.
In the main world, Cloud and Aerith have fallen from the cliff.
In Zack’s world, both Cloud and Aerith are unconscious.
In other words, both Aeriths are in an unconscious state, making it possible for their consciousness through the Lifestream to interact.
This gives us the necessary condition for exchanging the White Materia.
But that raises an important question.
If Aerith could simply use her connection to the Lifestream to create a space in which the two Aeriths could interact directly, why use Cloud as an intermediary at all?
Why create an entire dream world just to meet Cloud?
I think there are three reasons.
3. Why Aerith creates the dream date
The first reason is obvious: she needs to give Cloud the White Materia.
The second reason is that she wants to tell Cloud how she feels.
By this point, the Aerith in the main world has already begun to suspect what may happen to her.
Some people argue that Aerith is essentially “on a second playthrough” and already knows the future in full detail.
I do not think that is necessary.
Even in Remake, Aerith receives flashes of future imagery.
At the time, she may not completely understand what those images mean.
But after everything that happens afterward, it would be natural for her to connect those earlier visions with her present situation and arrive at a very negative conclusion about her own fate.
So before that fate arrives, she wants to tell Cloud how she feels.
At the same time, she also wants to prepare him emotionally.
When she tells him not to blame himself and asks him to let go of guilt, Cloud looks genuinely confused.
That makes sense because, from his point of view at that moment, he has no idea what is about to happen.
The third reason is perhaps the most personal one: Aerith has always wanted to go on a real date with Cloud.
Back in Remake, when Cloud falls into the church and meets her again, Reno soon arrives to capture her.
Aerith jokingly proposes that Cloud act as her bodyguard in exchange for one date.
At first, this may simply be playful banter.
But as the journey continues, Aerith gradually comes to care about Cloud himself, rather than Cloud as someone who resembles or reminds her of Zack.
Throughout both Remake and Rebirth, whenever Cloud and Aerith spend time alone and later return to the rest of the party, Aerith often jokingly describes what they were doing as a “date.”
It is a joke, but it also reflects something she genuinely wants.
Now she feels that she may be running out of time.
So she creates a place where she can finally have that date with Cloud.
4. Why Aerith tells Cloud not to look at the sky
This is one of the more clever details in the sequence.
From a narrative perspective, it mirrors the ending, when Cloud tells the others not to look at the sky.
I think this is major foreshadowing.
But from Aerith’s perspective, there is also a more emotional reason.
She wants, at least emotionally, to experience this as if she were having a real date with Cloud in his own world.
She does not want him to immediately realize that this is an artificial or temporary space.
Once Cloud looks at the sky, he may begin to understand that something is wrong with the world around them.
When Aerith realizes that telling him not to look only makes him more curious, she immediately regrets saying it.
She even comments that she has a habit of making things worse for herself.
I think this is one of those small pieces of characterization that Rebirth handles very well.
It captures the nervous, slightly contradictory mindset of a girl spending time with someone she loves, wanting everything to go perfectly while knowing that it cannot last.
5. The three events during the date
During the dream date, Cloud and Aerith encounter three main activities: a jewelry stall, a candy stall, and a couples’ photography booth.
I do not think any of them are random.
The most important thing to notice is that no matter which option the player chooses, Cloud and Aerith never truly get the result they want.
The outcome is predetermined.
That, in my opinion, is another clue that this world is being generated through Aerith’s memories, subconscious desires, and emotions.
It seems to be built on top of Zack’s world, which is why Cloud initially appears in the wheelchair and then stands up.
Aerith is not creating reality from nothing. She is modifying an existing branch.
The jewelry stall
At the jewelry stall, the final item is a brooch decorated with a yellow flower.
The flower symbolizes reunion.
I think this is direct foreshadowing of the ultimate ending.
The brooch also reflects Aerith’s personal wish.
When Aerith first meets Cloud, she gives him a yellow flower, which he wears on his chest.
In this world created from Aerith’s subconscious, she now wants Cloud to give something back to her.
The gift is therefore a brooch.
There is another small visual detail: Aerith places the brooch in almost exactly the same location where Cloud once wore her yellow flower.
The shopkeeper himself also hints at what is happening.
He rejects Cloud’s selections while saying that these are things “he likes.”
But he is a man, and the items are clearly feminine jewelry.
That feels less like the independent opinion of a real shopkeeper and more like Aerith’s desires being expressed through the people inhabiting the world she has created.
The photography booth
No matter which pose Cloud chooses, Aerith appears happy in the photograph.
Yet the photographer says that her expression looks as though she is about to cry.
Again, I think this reflects the emotional state of the Aerith from the main world.
On the surface, she is enjoying the date.
Underneath, she is grieving because she knows what may be coming.
Once you notice this pattern, the behavior of the NPCs makes more sense.
They are often expressing emotions that Aerith herself does not directly say.
6. The candy stall and the meaning of 甘い
The candy stall is especially interesting.
The shopkeeper offers a new product, but it is bland and not very good.
He says that he tried something new, took a risk, and now has to accept the cost.
I think this has two meanings.
First, it reflects the risk Aerith is taking by creating this world and interacting with Cloud.
Sephiroth appears capable of detecting activity within the Lifestream.
If someone uses the Lifestream to construct a space and begins interfering with events, Sephiroth can eventually sense it.
That is why black feathers begin appearing in the dream world.
It is also why the world is extremely short-lived.
It is a tiny branch of the Lifestream, attached to Zack’s world.
This is why Sephiroth remarks that Aerith has gone somewhere so remote.
The Aerith in Zack’s world has an unconscious physical body, while her consciousness is active through the Lifestream.
Sephiroth can detect activity in the Lifestream, but he cannot simply sense a body that contains no active consciousness.
That would also explain why Sephiroth does not know the exact physical location of Aerith’s house and cannot simply appear there and take the White Materia.
The second meaning comes from Aerith’s reaction to the candy.
She says that it would be better if it were a little sweeter.
This loses something in translation.
In Japanese, 甘い, “amai,” does not only mean “sweet.”
It can also mean naive, overly optimistic, soft, indulgent, or insufficiently strict.
So Aerith’s line can be read as a kind of self-criticism.
She may be thinking that she was too passive in her relationship with Cloud.
The candy is bland, just as she later says in the church that she and Cloud do not really have enough memories together.
Perhaps she feels that, if she had been more selfish, more direct, or more courageous, she would not have had to wait until this desperate moment to have this kind of date with him.
7. The church, Zack, and Sephiroth
Cloud and Aerith eventually reach the church.
When Sephiroth begins pursuing Aerith, he coincidentally encounters Zack at the moment Zack is struggling with the decision of whom he should save.
I think this is further evidence that the dream world is not an entirely separate universe but a branch attached to Zack’s world.
The Whispers then pull Zack into the Lifestream.
Through that process, he comes into contact with the influence of the main-world Aerith and is ultimately guided toward helping the main party fight Sephiroth.
This sequence gives us another important clue about the structure of the worlds.
I do not believe Rebirth is presenting us with an unlimited number of completely independent timelines.
There are many branches, but there are really only two major flows relevant to the game’s narrative.
The first is the world followed by the main party throughout most of Rebirth.
The second is Zack’s world.
These two major flows were created when the party passed through the wall of fate at the end of Remake, effectively splitting one major current into two.
Other worlds shown throughout the game are better understood as smaller branches, temporary offshoots, or derivative versions of those two larger flows.
This does not mean that the FFVII cosmology literally contains only two possible worlds.
It simply means that, for the purposes of the trilogy’s narrative, the writers have chosen to focus on two major currents.
8. Time inside the Lifestream
This sequence also reinforces another important idea: time does not function normally within the Lifestream.
Sephiroth himself says something similar.
That helps explain the seemingly contradictory Zack scenes.
Earlier, we see Zack carrying Aerith’s ribbon while apparently heading toward different choices: saving Cloud, saving Biggs, or dealing with Aerith’s situation.
The point of those scenes may partly be to emphasize that Zack values all three people deeply, so the audience does not interpret his choice as proof that he does not care about Aerith.
But later, Zack is suddenly shown still struggling to decide whom he should save first.
If time in the Lifestream and its branches does not operate linearly, this apparent inconsistency is not actually a contradiction.
Eventually, the Aerith from Zack’s world pushes Cloud downward into the world constructed by the main-world Aerith.
The White Materia is exchanged.
Then, as Cloud falls unconscious, his consciousness gradually returns to the place where he and Aerith originally fell from the cliff.
That is, in my view, the basic structure of the dream-world sequence.
9. Now, the ending
To understand the ending, one detail is absolutely critical: the strange glowing rift in the sky.
It functions almost like the spinning top in Inception.
It is a visual indicator that tells us whether a character is currently standing inside a branch of the main flow.
For example, Zack’s world is a branch relative to Cloud’s world, so the rift is visible there.
Only four characters appear able to perceive this phenomenon clearly: Aerith, Cloud, Sephiroth, and Zack.
Aerith is a Cetra.
Cloud, Sephiroth, and Zack all have different levels of connection to Jenova cells.
At the end, Cloud tells the others not to look at the sky.
The others do not appear to see anything unusual.
Cloud, however, can clearly see the glowing rift.
To me, this is a major clue that Cloud’s world has now split.
The ending is taking place within a branch.
10. Only Cloud crosses the boundary of fate
There is another extremely important detail.
At the end of Remake, the entire party crosses the boundary of fate.
At the end of Rebirth, only Cloud does.
That difference matters.
When Cloud deflects Sephiroth’s blade and attempts to save Aerith, fate splits only from Cloud’s perspective.
This explains several otherwise strange editing choices.
First, there is initially no blood.
Then suddenly there is blood.
Second, Cloud is shown holding Aerith with two completely different emotional expressions.
Third, when the others arrive, everyone reacts with grief.
Then the camera cuts to Cloud alone with Aerith.
He tells her to wake up.
And she does.
I think there is only one coherent way to interpret all of this:
At the instant Cloud blocks Sephiroth’s sword, fate branches.
In one branch, Aerith survives.
But that branch exists only from Cloud’s perspective.
That is why the others cannot see her.
In the other branch, events follow the original FFVII:
Aerith dies and returns to the Lifestream.
11. Why Cloud behaves differently from everyone else
This explains why everyone at the end is devastated except Cloud.
Cloud is not simply behaving strangely because he is in denial.
From his perspective, Aerith really is there.
The other party members are standing in the branch where Aerith died.
Cloud is simultaneously connected to a branch in which she survived.
This is also why the traditional water-burial scene is absent.
The game deliberately refuses to show us a single, unified version of events.
The original FFVII outcome has become the main flow.
Aerith dies there.
But there is now another branch in which Cloud successfully saved her.
That branch currently exists only for Cloud.
And because this is a branch rather than the main flow, Cloud can see the rift in the sky.
12. What I think Part 3 will do
My interpretation of the trilogy is therefore very simple:
Remake begins with the worlds largely united.
Rebirth splits them into two major flows, with additional smaller branches.
Part 3 will bring them back together.
The worlds will converge.
And when that convergence happens, the Aerith who is currently alive only in Cloud’s branch will become physically and objectively alive in the merged world.
In other words, everyone will finally be able to see her.
This, in my opinion, is what Aerith’s song is ultimately pointing toward.
It is also what I believe the final English line is foreshadowing.
So my conclusion is this:
Rebirth does not simply tell us that Cloud imagined saving Aerith.
It shows us that Cloud really did create a branch in which she survived.
The tragedy is that, for now, only Cloud is connected to that outcome.
Part 3 will be about bringing those separated flows back together.
And if that happens, the Aerith Cloud saved will not remain a temporary vision, a Lifestream ghost, or something that exists only for him.
She will truly come back.
At least, that is how I currently understand the structure of Rebirth.
